Wednesday, September 24, 2008

WLS Dr. Gives Up License

Sandy has a post that has me wanting to fly to Australia and demand to know why this doctor isn't in prison for murder. Evidently, he was on 60 Minutes last October, The Greatest Loss, and said there was no way he could lose his license to practice medicine, even though he'd had six patients die within a year of his particular form of WLS (a drastic one that no one else in Australia will do because it's just too dangerous), even though he tells prospective patients that the risk of dying is 1 in 200, when it's actually 1 in 20. Oh yeah, and if the surgery doesn't work for you, and kills you or you have life-threatening complications, it's your fault because you didn't follow his instructions to the letter.Well, he was spectacularly wrong about that loss of license to practice medicine (and it's too damned bad all his "practice" didn't teach him anything) - he surrendered his medical license, and has been under investigation by the Medical Board of Queensland surrounding his performing an especially extensive bariatric procedure, the bilio-pancreatic diversion.I'm sorry, but I can't come up with enough nasty expletives to call this sorry sack of shit who thinks he's a doctor. According to him:

He blamed the deaths on the failure of medical staff and on the patients, themselves. The Medical Board of Queensland had placed seven conditions on Dr. Broadbent on August 29, 2007. One restricted him to perform the BPD procedure only at hospitals with a nutritionist or dietitian on staff, which he told the paper was “a total waste of time.” He added:

Any amount of planning will not prevent the rogue patients from doing what they want to do... and two of these people who died were rogue patients who just would not follow instructions. In the first year after surgery all these people are at risk because they still have all their original co-morbidities (related conditions)... There's only one thing we guarantee with this operation — if they don't do what I ask them they'll end up in trouble. The rest is up to them...

It's lifesaving surgery, it's life-extending surgery that can save the community millions. Bear in mind these aren't well people — you see them waddling down the street.

Lifesaving surgery?! WTF?! What part of 1 in 20 dead from this operation makes it lifesaving? If those people who died from this "lifesaving" surgery hadn't had it, they'd still be alive, you fucking dipshit!!!!! That doesn't sound like lifesaving to me. You know what the scariest part of this whole thing is? This BPD surgery isn't covered by insurance in Australia, but it's covered by insurance in the good old USA. Hey, since you fatty mcfatties aren't dying fast enough or soon enough from being fat, we'll kill you off by using all kinds of dangerous surgeries trying to make you thin. But really folks, we're not trying to kill you, we're just trying to improve your health, because all that unsightly lard you're carrying around is going to kill you within the next 5 years if you don't do something NOW. Yeah, right, I believe you, you just have my best interests at heart (as long as it benefits your pocketbook, you could give a rat's ass about my health).Can you tell I'm highly pissed by this? I am so goddamned sick and tired of this bullshit, I could scream. Ya know what, I think I know how to put an end to this "WLS is the greatest cure for fat" bullshit. ANY doctor who wants to do this surgery on fat people has to undergo it himself if his BMI is 35+. How many of them would have enough confidence in any kind of WLS to undergo it themselves? How many of them would be willing to deal with any/all of the complications? How many of them would blame themselves if the surgery didn't work for them even if they did everything they tell their patients to do after having WLS? How many? Not very many at all, I'd bet.

Rhonwyyn - fat people cost the community millions because our fat causes so many diseases that are expensive to treat, donchaknow? Never mind that just as many thin people as fat get those same diseases, it's evidently cheaper to treat thin people than it is to treat fat people (or some such bullshit).

About 6 or 7 years ago, my (also fat) best friend convinced me to go to a WLS seminar. At that point, I had done some research on WLS, and it kind of scared the crap out of me. The very first site that I hit on Google was a description of how things could go horribly wrong, so I was trying to tell my friend that she was perfectly beautiful the way she was, and if she wanted to lose weight, FINE, go to Weight Watchers or the gym or somewhere that doesn't involve mutilating your perfectly functional GI tract. She was not listening. So I went with her to the seminar.

The presenting doctor was fat. Not just a little fat, a lot fat. Afterward, I asked him why, if this surgery was such a great idea, he hadn't had it. He mumbled something about "insurance not paying" and blew me off.

If this surgery was so awesome, one would think that a person in a generally well-paid professional field would be able to cough up the cash if he believed in it that much.

My Own Woman - yeah, I know we differ on this subject, but that's ok because there are areas in which we do agree, and that's what matters. We all have opinions, we are all entitled to them, and we can agree to disagree without getting hostile, that's why I like reading what you have to say too :)

Thanks for posting this, vesta; I might have missed it. Very frightening stuff. It is disgusting that something that causes a slow death is not allowed to be attributed to the surgery - it's the same thing that bothers me with adverse vaccine effects reporting - within days, you're not allowed to report it as coming from the vaccine and they don't count it, even though it's something that started with the vaccine and continued on for a year, causing long-term difficulty. With this surgery it's 30 days (much shorter with vaccines of course.) So all the stuff that IS caused by these things can slide under the rug and be explained in other ways. It's disgusting.

While I don't like the Brookhaven "Obesity" Clinic show, I have to say one thing for the doctor there - he will sign for the surgery if a patient is really really determined to do it, but he doesn't condone it and actively tries to prevent it. He says if he sent ten patients for it, he knows that 2 of them will end up dead given not very much time, and he can't justify that by any means. So in the morass of fat-hate that is the Discovery "Health" Channel, there is that one thing coming out - don't mutilate yourself to try to become thin. Of course the rest of the shows belie the whole thing, but at least one fat-fighter gets THAT much and doesn't want fat people to just all die.

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